where sass and sacred collide…

We Are Living a Miracle

Holy end of September. I feel like I’m just waking up from a nap. One of those crash-your-face-into-the-pillow and wake up chagrined by the drool kind of naps.

And actually, August and September were filled with a lot of those. I’m real sad I was such a jerk to naps when I was a kid. I guess I’m making up for that now.

Recovery is no joke. Right now I’m in the tired phase. I mean, we’re talking exhausted on a level that is totally foreign to me. But also in a way that is just real. And just recovery.

See, crisis immediately slows down and shrinks your world – in a good way. It instantly becomes obvious what needs your time and attention and what does not. Coming out of crisis means expanding that world – also a good thing, but tricky too. Finding a post-crisis-pace requires new definitions and new priorities, but the old ones are the habits that already know your name. And they taunt and test and sometimes trick you … thus commencing the drool-inducing-naps.

It’s no mistake that my current reading includes Present over Perfect, The Year of Living Danishly, and a novel about knitting (that I’m actually enjoying!). I’m learning the sacredness of slownessin a fast world.

A few weeks ago Jason taught on a passage in 1 Kings – I love me the Old Testament, but I haven’t hung out there in awhile. He taught through the passage where Elijah stood on Mount Carmel and tested the Baals – the false gods – in an epic dual with the true Living God. He literally saw fire rain down from heaven.

And then … he took a nap. No, for real. The day after he lived a miracle, Queen Jezebel threatened his life and Elijah ran into the desert to hide. He was wiped out, and there in the desert God met him with kindness, and food … and naps.

This is the amazing God I’ve been cuddling up with the last few months. The one who is all-powerful and all-kind at the same time, whose glory is seen not just when He allows us to have a front-row seat to miracles, but also when He cradles us as we collapse.

So be your fall fast or slow, may you find Him near, whether you’re standing on a mountaintop proclaiming glory or snuggling in the shadow of His wings.

We did it. We took a vacation. In a post-crisis reality, this is a big deal. You better believe there was some big celebration of what before was taken for granted. Because post-crisis, there are a lot of things you say goodbye to. Some forever, like naivety. Some for a short while, like vacationing. And because of Hank, this much-hoped-for vacation was not green-lighted until the day before we actually left. And oh my goodness, for those who didn’t see the update ala Facebook and Instagram, Hank is a wuss and NOT a cancerous tumor!

So as we come up on the six-month mark after Jason’s heart attack, we jumped a flight to Alaska and joined up with besties to explore Wonderland. It delivered. We rested. We played. We danced in the rain and shine. And I only had 2-1/2 panic attacks.

But seriously, what a wonder-full world. And even on the rainy days, we carried the sunshine in our pockets.

There’s a new threat in town. His name is Hank. We don’t know much about him yet, except that he’s most unwelcome and potentially the culprit behind Jason’s mysterious clotting. Maybe even behind the heart attack itself.

Hank is a mass snuggled up against Jason’s kidney and abdomen. He was discovered yesterday when, on a loooooooong shot, one of our amazing ‘ologists ordered CT scans to rule out a rare syndrome where tumors can be associated with clotting. He didn’t expect the scans to find anything. They did. They found Hank.

Hank is between the size of a golf ball and a baseball. He is not jagged, but appears to have a rim, and hard to say yet whether he is solid or liquid. So the next step is an MRI, and then a meeting with an Oncological Surgeon. Yep, all those words strike fear to my heart, even though at the moment we are in the limbo land of “maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that”, and at least some of the maybes are not dire. But some are. And sympathy is a terrifying thing to see on a Doctor’s face.

And miracles are allowed to be scared.

So we want to ring the bell without sounding the alarm. Because fear is not the boss of us. We’ve seen the power of prayer and know the greatest Physician of all, the ultimate Head of Household who can evict Hank with a single vote (that one’s for you, Jared!). I’d love it if we showed up next week and they couldn’t even find Hank.

Some of you joined in on last year’s e-version release and I can’t thank you enough for the amazing feedback. This summer, not only is it available in paperback but I’ve ALSO added a week, making it a summer-friendly six-week bible study, great for individuals or groups.

And I know grief is a scary topic, but as life teaches us how to lose things, let me dare you to pick up this book and find Life from Loss.

Also, the new week is, no joke, on Martha and Lazarus. I was in final edits when we started living our miracle. Never would I have dreamt that Martha and I would walk such a parallel path, being asked to declare who our God is in the midst of the darkness, and standing in awe as the stone of death was rolled away.

If you are ready fora summer of cleansing, healing Rain, if you’re standing on the edge of a storm – perhaps yours or maybe someone else’s, if you want to feel even more of your heart beat, I promise you that Friday’s Rain brings refreshing truth as it washes away facades and reveals what is most true:

we are deeply loved, by a wild Belover.

All this month, I’ll be sharing more about this study that brings a part of my heart and soul to your table. I can’t wait to hear how God reveals more of Himself to you through it.

ORDER HERE, and be sure to use the code FRIDAY15 for free shipping this week!

xoxo,

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“I highly recommend Friday’s Rain to anyone who has walked through grief, heartbreak or unanswered prayers. Grief is such an ugly word with so many negative connotations and unknowns. It is often journey that is taken alone and not talked about. As a society we like to avoid the elephant in the room because grief doesn’t have an easy “fix”- we wait until enough time has passed and then maybe bring it up, holding our breath hoping it is over. But the reality of grief is that it is never really “over” and the beautiful part about Friday’s Rain is that it allows space for processing while speaking truth that God has promised in His word. Brooke is transparent and speaks from a position of understanding. It is evident she has allowed God to take hold of her entire story and challenges each person embarking on the journey to do the same. Prepare to be challenged, encouraged, inspired and assured in how great God is. I went through the study and left feeling hopeful and a part of a community. The most important piece is realizing you are not alone. There simply are not enough words to express the impact this has had in my life. Do yourself a favor, step into the discomfort and embrace Friday’s Rain.”

Yesterday I got some of the final Christmas things stashed in their proper place in the garage beams. I figured it was a proper way to welcome June. And also, by I, I mean friends who are stronger than me, but I pointed and supervised like a champ.

This is what recovery looks like. Coming back online, back to life. Surging ahead and then slowing down. Working but resting. Inhaling but also exhaling. It’s tricky business, catching up on things that have had a four-month pause. Making new choices about how to use new time. Paying attention without being a hypochondriac. I mean, seriously, if I read the side-effects-call-your-doctor-if list long enough, I start feeling all the side effects of Jason’s medications.

It’s living in the middle of the both-and as life returns to normal, but an entirely new normal. A good normal, don’t get me wrong. Just a new one. Instead of dancing in the driveway, which he still doesn’t remember, we take an occasional spin around the living room. And we’ve instituted a new personal holiday that precedes Memorial Day by one week: We call it life-vest-no-more-day, basically a celebration of bra removal everywhere. Wait, that sounds awkward. Oh yes, that’s because life vests ARE awkward, and watching Jason take his off after three months of having it strapped to his chest was like watching him embrace the freedom that us ladies taste when we get to remove THE thing that truly lets us know our day is done and we can let our hair – and, umm, other things – down. Also, NO ARITHMEAS in the past three months. Cue happy dance.

Jason’s been back at his McSmarty-ness, logging hours at the library and hitting the books with a new love and fierceness – when he started this PhD program, we both knew he was tapping into a deeper, truer version of himself. He’s a teacher at heart, always has been, and soon he’ll have the degree that confirms it. In fact, as he was waking up from sedation and taking it all in, one of the first things he talked about was getting back into the classroom -that having received his breath back, he wanted to spend them in developing the next generation.

At the same time, we are still meeting new ‘ologists as explorations and tests continue. Jason has officially been deemed a ‘medical marvel’ as doctors review his charts and we review their eyebrows as they inch up into a state of surprise. There is great comfort in hearing things like “your test results are extraordinarily boring”, but also some confusion surrounding my guy’s body and heart and why it stopped fifteen Fridays ago.

So some days the road feels like this

And other days like this

It’s not the first time we’ve heard how MARVEL-us we are … in fact, in some ways you could say we’ve been pre-conditioned to live without answers to everything.
But since science can’t answer why he woke up, I won’t be surprised if it also can’t answer why it first happened. Because we’re only the boss of little bits. So again with the being tricky …

And so we put away the Christmas decorations in June. We open and sort the mail that came in three months ago. We call doctors with questions and we remember who the Great Physician is. We work and make choices again. We pay the medical bills with a deep sigh of thanks … both to the doctors and to the givers that have made check-writing a thing of celebration. We have movie marathon days. We live in the knowledge that we’re not the boss of it all. And we embrace this most holy of truths:

IT IS NO BAD THING TO CELEBRATE A SIMPLE LIFE.

– J.R.R. Tolkien as Bilbo Baggins

Also, Bilbo said that on his 111th birthday. Amen to the long MARVEL-us road.

You guys, Jesus is so funny. I think we will have some good belly laughs someday. Like that time He asked the barren woman to give the message on Mother’s Day. I mean, who doesn’t want to hear about infertility. At Church. On Mother’s Day.

But really, this is about learning to be His child while I pursued being a mom. And just how BRILLIANT this God of ours is even though He – and life – are often not what we planned.In the face of barrenness – of loss, disappointment, confusion, emptiness, whatever the variety – Isaiah tells us to sing, and to make room for more, not less. So this was my Mother’s Day song.

Also, don’t worry, I don’t really sing. It’s an analogy. As are the dolphins.

P.S. Loss doesn’t have the last word. That’s why I wrote “Friday’s Rain“.

Jay and Katherine Wolf are living a miracle and telling their story of ‘Hope Heals’. In mid-February I signed up to read their book as part of a launch team and help share their story. Just days later, we were living it. In fact, I emailed them from our ICU room before Jason woke up, asking for the book to be delivered STAT.

It arrived the day after we got home from the hospital. Complete with a personal note from Jay and Katherine.

We read it as sleep healed, and quiet healed, and yes hope healed.

Written from the proximity of loss, reading this book felt like kneeling beside Katherine and Jay inside the holy of holies, daring to voice both lament and praise. We’ve practiced this voice before. In fact, just before picking up this book, my J said: “I’m thankful; but damn, this hurts.” We know we’re ‘allowed’ to think that way, but it’s still a hard line of truth for a miracle to speak. And then it was echoed when we read this from Katherine’s pen: “I can give God the glory, and it can still hurt.” (p.16) It was like meeting friends who spoke the same language to the same God: the God who can take it. And the God who meets us in it.

And true to Katherine’s words, this book brought both glory and hurt. Glory in hearing another story redeemed by our amazing God in the midst of loss; hurt in facing the exquisite ways that Jay Wolf describes his time in the ER, the hospital room, and their amen to the long road. There were many days that my Jason would ask me to stop reading, sometimes even just a paragraph or two in for the day, because it was just too painful to hear what “the awake spouse” experienced.

I would pause, close the book, and silently agree that Jay and I had walked a parallel heart-path as we said goodbye to our spouses and hello to our fears, wondering if we would “no longer be a casual observer of the pain but the recipient.” He speaks of the sound of silence being broken by the sound of his own wailing (p. 26), and I too remembered how hearing my own wail was at once foreign and familiar. Something that was coming from inside me, yet as if from a distance too.

Jay speaks of his rush to the ER desk and the nurse there using a tone reminding him that it was his crisis, not everyone else’s. And I could see in my minds’ eye the nurses that wouldn’t make eye contact with me when I arrived to the ER and was ushered into a private waiting room. They didn’t need my break-down to interrupt everyone else’s waiting.

But slowly, day by day, we would read a little more. And then close the pages of their story and discuss the pages of our own. This book was like an elbow-to-the-side from a friend, saying “hey, talk about this part … yes, that part too. Don’t skip it.”

There were moments in Katherine’s pages when I would see Jason nod, or sigh, or close his eyes in recognition of a moment of ICU despair. Of walking a sacred road that included being asleep for the most dramatic moments. (Confession: we did scan over some of the details of the physical healing, as that section got long, but this story is powerful enough that even scanning over it is impactful.)

Jay speaks of the day “I released Katherine from my feeble grip and into God’s. I knew that, though Katherine may well lose her life, she would never lose the indomitable goodness and inexplicable love of God. And neither would I.” THIS is the healing of which they speak. The healing this book offers goes far beyond the physical, and dares us all to think of how “we all walk through this life on the edge of a blade, and yet we rarely allow ourselves to feel the weight of our potential losses or the grace of our potential gains.” (p. 66)

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*Released TODAY; go grab a copy and dare to meet Jay and Katherine in the pages of this book. Dare to go even further and feel the elbow-nudge as their story unlocks your own …

And LIFE is here, you guys. We are in it. We have a new filter, a new way to make decisions and priorities but we are back in the zone where we need … well, filters and decisions and priorities. And sometimes it’s real tricky. And coming at us real fast.

Eight Fridays ago feels like a lifetime removed from our here and now, but also like a constant timer going off in the background. In the here and now, we are laughing and holding hands and rolling our eyes at the same drama and launching dreams like books and businesses (turns out the Entrepreneur-apple didn’t fall far from the tree) and turning our prayers to other emergencies and hurts.

But also, it’s only been eight Fridays since our emergency. Jason still wears a life vest. We have learned what a false alarm on that thing sounds like (hint: terror. It sounds like terror.) We own a sexy old-man-pill-box. And Cardiac Rehab is a part of our new rythym.

It’s still. So. Surreal.

Eight Fridays ago I called one of my best friends and in a tremor-filled-voice asked if she would drive me to the hospital.

That’s the last thing I asked for.

I didn’t ask anyone else to come to the hospital. They came.

I didn’t ask anyone to bring me food. They held apples up to my face and told me when to bite.

I didn’t ask anyone to smuggle cots into the waiting room. They found a way.

I didn’t ask anyone to replace my silly heels. They brought Uggs and it felt like stepping into a hug. That I wore for four days straight. So ummm, they didn’t want them back.

I didn’t ask anyone to start a dinner plan. But every night on the courtyard patio there was the breaking of bread and more being nourished than just our bodies.

I carried around a box full of hotel toiletries like it was a prized baby doll, you guys.

Because love looked so PRACTICAL in that space. Love showed up in every single hug. And prayer. And song. And baby snuggle. And card. And candy bar. And yes, hotel toiletry.

It was a collision of selflessness that turned into a beautiful symphony. I’ll never be the same because of it. And it hasn’t stopped – people are still giving us LIFE in countless ways. Turns out meal trains are the bomb, by the way. And turns out we have some amazing cooks in our tribe.

I’ve always taken Jesus’ words to heart when He said it’s more blessed to give than receive. And I get what He was saying. But I gotta say the blessing of receiving over these last eight Fridays has blown my socks off too. It’s powerful to see what life together can look like. I’m starting to think that life together is one of the most sacred things we have.

Tonight we are sharing at Choose Joy – and yes, saying WE still makes me giddy, I’m guessing that will continue much longer than the counting of Fridays will.Choose Joy is a conference-that-feels-more-like-family and this is our third year here. It’s targeted to couples going through infertility and/or adoption, but you know what it’s really targeted at? Alone-ness. Fear. Lies that you’re the only one. See, some crises are far more private and invisible than a heart attack. And rarely does someone pick up the phone and ask for anything when their heart is being attacked in a way that can be hidden. It’s tricky learning how to share it. But dang am I amazed every year at the power of going from “1-in__________” to “1-of-a___________”.

Sometimes you don’t realize who your tribe is until you need them. Jason was once told that he “counted by ones” – to be honest, it was said as a negative, though in taking that phrase home we decided we always wanted to count that way, and never give into the ministry-pressure to start counting success by any number higher than one. That decision felt costly at the time. But as I sat in that waiting room and looked around me, you know what I was doing? Counting by ones … all the ones had gathered in that room together. Our Pastor looked over at me at one point and said, “this is a good return on your investment.” He could not have been more right.

So you guys, count by ones. Invest in your people. Take the risk of showing up. Because all I asked for eight Fridays ago was a ride to the hospital. Our people carried us from there …

When the doctors and both attending nurses walked into that waiting room, I stood, expecting to hear the pronouncement, the time of death, the confirmation of this new title I never wanted. I mean, I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, I know what happens when the attending physician comes in with backup.

Instead, the doctor’s eyes and mouth got wide at the same time as he said “I can’t explain it, but he’s awake, you should go see him!” One of the nurses then grabbed my hand and raced me down the hallway. She was practically skipping, proclaiming over and over again that she’d never seen anything like this, that it was a miracle. My steps were a little more stumbley and heavy, as my mind and heart tried to catch up.

And there he was. ALIVE! And mad – oh my gosh so blessedly mad at the tubes and so scared by the noises. His eyes were just as wide as before, but instead of blank orbs there was LIFE fighting to see and be seen. He was in way too much danger for anything more than a few minutes of sloppy kisses on his forehead and words to calm him and tell him he was so loved.

I went back to the waiting room to tell everyone it was true: He IS alive! A friend raced in moments later – I will never forget the sound of his flip-flops as they raced down the hall and into the waiting room, not pausing to round the corners, coming at full speed to my side, where both of our messy tears and words rambled through a series of “I heard he was gone? But that now he’s alive?” and “yes!” and “what!?” and “how can this be?” and “what does this mean?”

I imagine a very similar scene in “that other” sacred waiting room – the Upper Room where the disciples waited from Saturday to Sunday morning. Like me, Peter was trying to wrap his head and heart around watching his best friend as he was dying. Like me, they were preparing for a burial. I mean, you guys, the women went to the tomb to prepare the body for burial, not to check for resurrection.

And the women came and Peter probably stood. Or maybe he only half looked up. Because either way, he already knew what they were there to say. They came to pronounce that they had prepared the body.

Except they hadn’t.

Because his body wasn’t there.

Because he was IS alive.

And Peter ran. His feet flew to the tomb when he heard the words that Jesus was ALIVE … I don’t know whether he ran in confidence or confusion or with skipping feet or stumbling feet. But when I read of Saint Peter’s footsteps as he ran to the tomb, I will forever hear an echo of my own as I ran-stumbled down an ICU hallway. And I’ll hear those flip flops, too.

Because “He is alive!” is news that makes you run.

So I hope you run today. To the empty tomb. To life. To Jesus. Whether you have seen His new life with your own eyes or heard a report and are still figuring out what it means, whether you’re in ugg-boots or flip-flops, whether you’re running with confidence or stumbling along as someone else holds your hand. Run. Run to the news that HE IS ALIVE.